Kidston opened her first shop in London’s Holland Park in 1993, selling hand-embroidered tea-towels and brightly renovated furniture. By the end of 2013, she had 136 outlets, including a flagship store on Piccadilly next to Fortnum & Mason and four stores in China. Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs programme, Kidston described her shops as provoking a ‘Marmite reaction’: “People either love it and want a little bit of it very much, or want to stab us.” In 2010, she sold a majority stake of the company to private equity investors TA Associates, retaining a minority stake and remaining the company’s Creative Director.

Kidston has worked with Milletts to design tents (2005–6), Nokia/ Carphone Warehouse mobile phones (2006), and Roberts radios (2005 onwards). In 2008, she collaborated with Tesco to produce shopping bags made from plastic bottles, which were sold to raise almost £500,000 for Marie Curie Cancer Care and saved about six million plastic bottles from landfill.